The Tamagotchi Pix has a built-in camera to take pictures with your pet

Today Bandai announces the Tamagotchi Pix – a combination of its classic Tamagotchi pet-rearing toy line with a new built-in camera to take photos with your digital pet.

The Pix is ​​shaped like a hatching egg, with the top part of the “broken shell” acting as a shutter release. Using the camera, you can put yourself (and friends) in pictures with your Tamagotchi, with suitably cute photo frames. We contacted Bandai for more information on camera quality.

Photos taken with the Pix are stored locally and any photos you take will appear in a feed that documents your time with your pet. Bandai considers this to be a kind of social media on the device, but since the Pix can’t connect to Wi-Fi and photo sharing is limited, it’s not really social. Presale for the Tamagotchi Pix starts today for $ 59.99.

Image: Bandai

Previous Tamagotchi, such as the Tamagotchi On, have used Bluetooth to connect to other devices, but the Pix takes a less high-tech approach. If you want to share images with other Pix wearing friends, they can take a picture from a “Tama code”. Bandai says these codes contain everything you share, so you can basically exchange images via QR codes. Bandai also plans to issue Tama Codes for in-game items if you play games on tamagotchi.com from August.

In addition to the camera functions, Tamagotchi Pix also has new touch-based buttons instead of the usual physical ones, and several new gameplay mechanics. Have you ever wanted to influence your Tamagotchi’s future employment status outside of the world? Apparently, the way you raise your Tamagotchi and decorate the room now affects its future profession and what other eggs you can breed after your first Tamagotchi grows up. Tamagotchi can also participate in new activities such as painting, cooking and ordering food for delivery.

The Tamagotchi Pix captures a little bit of the feel of it Pokémon Go‘s augmented reality camera. It’s not that robust – you just stick your pet in a picture instead of discovering them going out into the world – but some of that AR magic is there. Obsessively documenting your pet’s life in photos can recreate some of that parent-child bond, but I think the basic feeling that Pix’s little AR photos can evoke is the basic feeling that Pix’s little AR photos can evoke. can evoke: that you exist in the same space as your Tamagotchi and that somehow it is real – even if limited to a plastic egg.

The Tamagotchi Pix comes in four different colored “shells”: “flowers” (pink), “sky” (purple), “ocean” (blue) and “nature” (green). Pink and purple are available for pre-sale today, and blue and green are coming soon, according to Bandai.